| Not a single river healthy on 12:22 - Apr 1 with 278 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:47 - Apr 1 by SuperKieranMcKenna |
Indeed - I haven’t seen a single poster explain to me why Welsh Water is one of the worst for leaks and pollution, yet not beholden to shareholders. Is it because humans naturally put financial matters over the environment? The need to make a profit is simply replaced by the need to spend as little capital as possible.
Privatisation has not delivered efficiency or competition (or even competence), but unless we improve our environmental legislation we won’t see any improvement no matter who owns the water companies. |
Indeed, public-owned or private-owned, there are always going to be issues of how they are run. It just seems crass to be paying more to pay profits for worse services whilst still having the same issues. |  |
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| Not a single river healthy on 08:48 - Apr 5 with 132 views | DJR |
| Not a single river healthy on 13:27 - Mar 27 by redrickstuhaart |
We risk going full circle. British Rail was disastrous. No incentive to improve or compete tends to lead to stagnation. Of course, it is in part about the outlook of the administration, but our public sector values are a massive oil tanker which would take decades of investment and strong will to turn around. |
This, from a recent edition of Private Eye, indicates that British Rail was not a disaster.
"The government seems to have learned nothing from the disjointed train procurements of the last 30 years, judging by its latest "overview" of new trains.
Britain supplied trains and components to itself and countries worldwide until privatisation halted British Rail's research and development and made domestic orders ludicrously erratic. Now only Derby has a mass-production factory belonging to, er, a French multinational: other trains are imported complete or as kits.
The hiatus after the pre-pandemic boom in train orders now puts more than 1,000 jobs at risk in Derby. He insisted the government was "committed to supporting a world-class UK-based engineering industry", but his list of future orders shows no contract awards until next year, for delivery years later.
Merriman expects four train operators (three owned by DfT) to order trains separately, rather than DfT buying in bulk for cheaper prices. Even geographical bedfellows Northern and TransPennine Express (TPE) - both DfT owned - will order individually. Nothing learned, then, from their disconnected orders for different train types in 2016, which triggered huge disruption for passengers while staff were trained on each type. Disruption is sometimes amplified because Northern drivers can't drive TPE trains, and vice versa.
To simplify operations, last year TPE jettisoned one of its new fleets, which would be ideal for DfT-micromanaged Chiltern Railways. But Chiltern is now jumping through procurement hoops while money is spent keeping costly ex-TPE trains serviceable and idle.
Rolling-stock companies (ROSCOs) and other train financiers have paid shareholders whopping dividends as train-leasing costs rocketed. But even in the current cash squeeze Merrryman says the government is committed to keeping manufacturers and their "financiers and ROSCOs" informed on future orders. Ker-ching again!" |  | | |
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